Prince
by the Unrequited Lover
Summary: One-shot, set while Velkan is with Dracula as a werewolf. Confronted by Aleera, Velkan remembers his past, back before Aleera was a bride, and Aleera knows she's made a hard choice, giving up her Prince...


_Disclaimer: Dracula- not mine. Velkan- not mine. Aleera- not mine. Anyone else? Not mine. ::cries::  
__A/n: I know you're sick of one-shots, but this is a really good one, I promise! Blame Gica again, she's my muse's foster sister or something. We were discussing the one-shot I'm writing (I'm so horrible) and we had a joke about Aleera and Anna in school, so that's where this all came from…ahem, well, on with the show._

"That was interesting," came a voice from the shadows. Velkan jerked around frantically in the chains in order to see the speaker, an obvious female. Although he could not see whom, he could hear her continue. "All that fur…you make a handsome wolf, Prince."

He craned his neck looking, before a slight breeze went before his face and he looked ahead, jumping backwards in surprise. It was Aleera, her eyes sparkling, her hair in disarray, her lips parted in a half-smile, exposing both her lovely pink lips and her deadly teeth. Her face was close, far too close…

_"Anna will kill you if she finds out," he warned, dodging out of her way. The redhead stepped up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck._

"_Anna isn't here, love…" she whispered, and pressed her lips to his…_

"What did you come for, Aleera?" Velkan asked angrily, wrists hanging helplessly in the air, suspended by the rusty chains. He blocked the memory from his mind, upset that he'd even thought of it.

She reached forward to touch his face, anger on her face, but not in her actions. "Oh, shut up, Velkan…you're glad to have someone here."

She traced his upper lip with her sharp fingernail, commenting, "You know, when you transformed, I thought you looked rather like you did at fifteen, when you tried to grow a mustache…"

He struggled to keep amusement from his features. "Don't bring those days up, Aleera; they're dead. You're dead."

She paid him no mind. "You don't think so…." Her hand slipped down his chest, against his speeding heartbeat. "I can tell from this that you are enticed."

He jerked irately, alarming her for a moment. She took a step back, no longer touching him. "Perhaps I 'm just afraid."

"Afraid?" she repeated, an ugly look on her face, as she grew cross with him as well. "What have you got to be afraid of?"

"You're all in bad moods," he said tersely. She laughed at him,

"How could we not be?" she repeated scornfully. "Your sister killed my sister."

"Now we're even," Velkan said bitterly. "I was under the impression that someone else did."

Aleera opened her mouth to say something, then shut it with a thoughtful look. Velkan, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, recognized that could mean nothing good. The vampire bride paced the room, thinking.

"Maybe you could find out who he was," she said slowly, then turned on Velkan, a twisted smile on her face. "Would that make you happy?" she yelled. "Would it please you to go out tonight- the full moon- to see about this man? Don't you want to rip him up?!"

Velkan clenched his teeth. "Do I?! You act as though it were my choice to become a werewolf! Well, it isn't- unlike you," he spat contemptuously, "I don't want to be this filth."

Aleera stared at him, breathing heavily. Then she struck him across the face. "Shut up, Velkan," she hissed. "You don't know what you're talking about."

He looked up at her with condescension. "You chose a vampire, despite all the Valerious family had done for you. Despite all we'd done to help you, you chose him!"

"He offered me life!" She shrieked.

"We offered you love," Velkan said simply, and hung there in the chains defeated. He wasn't sure what she would say.

She looked down at her feet, her arms at her sides, and he could see her wipe perspiration on the pink dress, looking so different from the girl she'd been.

"He was our enemy," Velkan said softly. "How could you? He shows you no care. I saw you, you and that other one, the one who tried to kill you once-"

"Verona is my sister. Verona loves me."

"She loves you as long as you bear that name 'Dracula', as long as you have that curse," he said spitefully. "Anna was a better sister."

"Marishka loved me," Aleera said in a hollow, sad voice. "Now Marishka's dead, and…and the Master didn't care."

"You call him your Master, you call him your love, and what does he do?" Velkan asked, but it was a rhetorical question. Aleera stood solemnly, head hanging.

"I'll tell you," he went on. "He goes and thinks only of finding another. His 'love' is nothing more than a desire for more of those dead children. You were once capable of bearing living children, Aleera. You were once capable of being loved….you could have had so much, but you threw it away. For what? Surely you won't even outlive Anna, who despises you."

He looked up. Aleera's shoulders shook, as though she were crying. She looked up, her eyes full of misery- and rage. "Shut up, Velkan…"

"That's the third time you've said that to me, today, at any rate."

"Then why are you still talking?" she demanded, her voice echoing shrilly in the cavernous dungeon. When, after a period, Velkan spoke again, his voice was soft.

"Why have you come here, Aleera? To torture me?"

"No. Join us, Velkan…" she said in answer, walking up to him.

"Join you?" he repeated bleakly. "No. No, Aleera, I won't…I'm not like you."

"Please?" she pleaded with him, her violet eyes following his brown ones. "Just do it, Velkan, do it for me."

"No," he said firmly. "I won't leave my sister."

Something flashed in Aleera's eyes. "You'll get something better than a sister," she said in a low voice.

He flinched furiously. "Don't say that, Aleera. Don't ever say that!"

"Stop yelling at me, and listen."

"It isn't worth it. Anna is dear to me, and you're a vampire." Velkan pulled his wrists, but once again, he was not free.

"You want out of those chains, Velkan?" asked Aleera dangerously. "Then agree."

"The suffering I must bear now is nothing compared to the suffering of my family in Purgatory." Velkan said with definite disdain for her. It reached Aleera's ears and stung her like a bee.

"Your family," she remarked. "It's always them. You've always liked Anna better than me!"

"She's my sister, she's my only family, since my father has gone missing!" Velkan shouted.

A look passed over Aleera's dainty features at the mention of his father that Anna did not like, but nothing else seemed to come of it.

"Fine then, be that way, Velkan, Prince of Gypsies," Aleera said tauntingly, and went over to the other side of the dungeon and sat across from him. "But I'll be waiting for you to change your mind."

"Hmm, sounds familiar," he said wryly.

"It should," she shot back. "But you didn't keep your promise."

"And you never keep yours," he rejoined. "In any case, it's….it's too late now. You're a vampire and you can't go back."

"You're a werewolf and you cant' go back," she mimicked. "Well, not unless you get the cur-"

Aleera blanched and shut her mouth. Velkan's eyes filled with hope and he looked up at her. "There's a cure? Oh, Aleera, please…"

She looked at him, pity in her eyes for a brief moment, then shook her head. "No, I can't, the Master…he wants you in his control."

"Oh, Aleera…"

"Shut up!" she cried for the fourth time. He bowed his head, hair falling over his face in sorrow. She watched him. Her Velkan, so lovely…she shook all thoughts out of her head….

Sometimes one must wonder, when they think of a person, if that person is thinking of them as well, for Aleera and Velkan both sat in silence then and considered all things, and their thoughts were as one…

_Back in school, flashback..._

"Velkan, you haven't practised with me to kill Dracula for a month," came the voice of an exasperated Anna, the prince's younger sister. She was walking over to him from the library. The Valerious family home had been used as a school in those days, and youths from all sorts of places got together.

"I've been busy," he responded absent-mindedly, looking over a piece of paper that Anna knew to be anything other than schoolwork.

"Velkan!"

"Hey, that's mine-"

Anna had snatched it from his hand and raced across the hallway, reading it. The spelling was poor, the grammar okay. The words were meant to convey love, passion…she rolled her eyes at it.

"Aleera?" she spat, shoving it into her brother's chest. "You're meeting with her?"

"I thought you liked her…" Velkan protested, following his sister as she stormed out and into another giant room, luckily an empty one.

"Oh, yes, she cant' spell at all!"

"It's not her fault," he tried to explain that Aleera had only been taught letters sparingly in childhood, and was improving rapidly now that she'd joined the Valerious family.

"Well, she's so…uneducated!"

"She's perfectly educated, you just don't like the thought of me spending moer time with her than you!"

"I've lost my entire family, Velkan Valerious!" Anna yelled, turning to face him. The sixteen-year-old girl's face shone with anger and pain. "You and Papa are all I have left, and you barely talk to me anymore!"

"She's worse off than we are," Velkan said softly. "She has no family left."

Anna became very very quiet. "All right," she said at last. "I'll forgive you."

He smiled at her warmly. "Thank you, Anna…" He rushed past her to leave the room, where he continued to walk down the hallway, not even thinking about seething Anna, who hadn't expected him to leave so quickly. He had to see her, had to talk to her…something had been on his mind, something that troubled her greatly. Velkan turned the corner and- jumped back. There was someone there!

"Did I scare you?" asked a voice coyly from the shadows. His expression changed to one of delight. "Aleera!" he exclaimed happily. She smiled at him and her enveloped her in a hug. She returned it gladly, then pulled away, her red curls up in two mussed buns, her brown eyes full of love and adoration.

He smiled, then became more distant in voice and urgent in tone, clutching her shoulders. "Aleera," he began quickly, "I heard you were being harassed by Dracula's bride-"

"Verona? No, not at all," Aleera said hastily. "What makes you think that? I know she's usually not fond of me…to say that least…" A dark look grew on her face, then vanished. "But she was actually quite nice, asked me how I was…I pulled out a stake, but it didn't seem to bother her. She just said, 'Till next we meet, Aleera, darling,' and flew off."

Velkan's expression clouded. "That's not good…maybe the Count is after you as a bride!"

"He wouldn't be," Aleera said, "and I'd never choose him over you."

He hugged her close and she hugged him back. "After all, you're my Velkan." She pulled back and smiled brightly, then kissed the tip of his nose. "My Prince of Gypsies!"

Velkan smiled at Aleera, not knowing that two weeks later, after they would finish schooling with his father Boris, Aleera would leave him forever.

_The dungeon of Castle Dracula_ ... 

"You are such a liar," came Velkan's voice out of the gloom suddenly. Aleera looked up at the gypsy.

"He promised me life," said Aleera quietly.

"And I loved you," Velkan said into the dusky atmosphere. "Why don't you join me?"

Aleera looked at him doubtfully. "I don't think I could.."

"You could. Anna would let you. This hunter would. We'd accept you. Let me go, Aleera, and let yourself go…together we'll go back to the side of right."

Aleera opened her mouth to speak, but the dungeon door opened, and Dracula entered. Aleera looked up at him ecstatically, then rushed over to him and embraced him, kissing his neck and face shamelessly while he looked at Velkan with that horrible frozen smile on his face, marring whatever beauty the Count had in youth. Aleera then began to whisper something into the Count's ear, and when they broke away he nodded with a smile at her, then she left the dungeon in a flourish.

Dracula began to walk towards the Prince. "Aleera suggests that you discover our visitor's name," he said with amusement.

Velkan stared at him in hatred. Didn't the vampire know how much he despised him? He stole everything from him, everything…

"If there's anything you taught me," he said through clenched teeth, "it's how short a time love lasts. You took my mother, drove so many of my family members to destruction, and took the woman I loved. Don't you feel any shame?!"

"I feel nothing," Dracula said, smiling cruelly. "But you, Princeling, will learn to feel things very deeply…"

As the vampire unhooked the chains and let Velkan collapse onto the floor, the clouds parted, exposing the sheer silver flesh of the full moon.

Stepping carefully out of harm's way, Dracula looked at the spectral orb, then down at the terrified Prince. "Drink her up, Velkan, you have a job tonight…"

Outside the room, a redheaded girl in pink listened to screams of a man change into howls of a wolf, weeping….

_Later, after Dracula had strapped Velkan to the table, and before the children had come to life…_

Velkan struggled against the bonds, knowing the electricity would be coming soon to shock him into pain, the same as it had done to his father. In despair, he thought of Boris Valerious, raising him and Anna…. Anna, who he had risked his life to save. Oh, his beloved sister. Would he never see her again?

He heard the sound of movement behind him, and then cold hands on his chest. His voice was momentarily obscured by red curls, then his eyes met Aleera's, and he could imagine for a moment that they were brown, that she was mortal and his, as the eyes that met his were full of tears.

"Aleera-"

"No," she said in a voice choked with tears. "Please, shut up…"

She kissed him, and her tears fell on his face. Then she pulled away, and looked off at something, then down at him. "I have to go, Verona calls me," she explained, her words wrought with sorrow.

"Aleera," he called. "Free me. Free yourself. We can both of us fight! You can find the cure for me and love shall cure you. We'll overcome this…"

Her hand caressed his face gently and she looked down upon him.

"I can't," she whispered. "Good-bye, my Velkan, Prince of Gypsies…" She kissed him one last time, and stepped away from the table until he could see her no longer.

"Aleera!" he cried to her, but to no avail. No one answered.

Once more he tried in vain. "Aleera!" There was still no reply. "I love you, Aleera," he said, his face now beginning to be lined with streaks of tears.

Then the shocks of electricity hit him and he remembered nothing but pain….

…As Aleera watched Velkan become engulfed in electricity, the same thing that was to give life to her children, she clutched at her undead heart, feeling the twinges of love once again.

"I love you too, Velkan," she whispered, her hand reaching for him, though she knew it did not help. "More than you know…"

And she went off into the night.

**THE END.**


End file.
